Germany to Stockpile Smallpox Vaccine

Germany plans to stockpile enough smallpox vaccine by the end of the year to protect its entire population of 82 million from a terrorist attack with the virus, the government said Wednesday.

The government has 36 million doses of the vaccine and will increase that to 100 million this year, Health Minister Ulla Schmidt said. The program's cost has been estimated at up to $169 million.

Schmidt emphasized it was being launched as a precaution, not in response to a specific threat.

"We all hope that we will never be forced to use the vaccine," she told reporters.

Authorities would begin a vaccinating people, starting with health and emergency workers, the moment a case of smallpox appears anywhere in the world, Schmidt said. The World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated in 1979.

Germany launched the vaccine purchases after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, buying 25 million doses in 2001. Eleven million more were procured last year, an additional 30 million are to be delivered by April and the rest are to follow by the end of this year.

Smallpox last appeared in nature in Somalia in 1977.

All stocks of smallpox virus were supposed to have been destroyed except for samples in two official labs in Russia and the United States. But experts fear hostile nations or terrorist groups may have the virus and could use it in an attack.